The present invention relates in general to the field of public networks and network communication and, more particularly, to enterprise interaction hub for managing an enterprise web system.
For many business enterprises, it has become important to reach customers, vendors and employees through the Internet or other public network. Consequently, there is a large and growing number of web-based site development and management tools available to enterprises that want to create or improve a presence on the Internet. However, a number of problems are recurrent in such web development efforts and not adequately addressed by conventional web site development and management tools.
Web-based communication is different from mainframe and client-server arenas where many information services (IS) departments have most of their expertise. One difference is that HTTP, an underlying protocol of web communication, is both connectionless and stateless. This causes a problem for dynamic interactions with the user where a web system needs to be able to keep track of the user""s state during a session involving multiple web interactions (e.g., web page requests). Without a way to manage state, between web transactions the system will have xe2x80x9cforgottenxe2x80x9d information about the user and the context of the session. This can be further complicated by the fact that in many large web systems the user does not interact with the same web server from transaction to transaction.
In accordance with the present invention, enterprise interaction hub system and method for managing an enterprise web system are disclosed that provide significant advantages over conventional web-based system development and management tools.
According to one aspect of the present invention, the enterprise interaction hub includes a number of layers that interact to manage an enterprise web system. An interaction layer receives requests to the enterprise web system and returns responsive web pages. A presentation layer is coupled to the interaction layer and generates the responsive web pages. A business layer is coupled to the presentation layer and provides business logic for use by the presentation layer in generating the responsive web pages. An integration layer is coupled to the business layer and interfaces with existing legacy data to provide the legacy data to the business layer. A trend collection layer monitors and accumulates historical information from the interaction layer, the presentation layer, the business layer and the integration layer. The trend collection layer also stores the historical information in a trend database. A profile database, accessible by the presentation layer and the business layer, stores profile data, including data mined from the trend database, that characterizes individual user access to the enterprise web system. The profile data is used by the presentation layer and the business layer to provide customized dynamic content in the generated web pages.
A technical advantage of the present enterprise interaction hub is that the layered architecture allows the various functional areas of an enterprise web system to be insulated from each other helping to improve web system robustness while easing development and quality assurance through clear demarcations of functionality. The layered architecture also allows pieces of the enterprise web system to evolve individually as business needs and web technologies change.
A technical advantage of the use of the global session server is that it allows a web system engine to remain stateless with respect to an ongoing user interaction with the web system. This ability to remain stateless frees web system engine to effectively manage server load balancing and other speed issues. Further, by separating the state information from important enterprise data (which can be stored in secure databases), the global session server allows the web system engine to more quickly associate a state with a particular user request that reflects the history of the current user session.
Other technical advantages should be readily apparent to one skilled in the art from the following figures, description, and claims.